Concept
Reform
Overview
Reform refers to the improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, unsatisfactory, etc. The modern usage of the word emerged in the late 18th century and is believed to have originated from Christopher Wyvill's Association movement, which identified "Parliamentary Reform" as its primary aim. Reform is generally regarded as antithetical to revolution.
Developing countries may implement a range of reforms to improve living standards, often with support from international financial institutions and aid agencies. This can involve reforms to macroeconomic policy, the civil service, and public financial management.
In politics, there is debate over what constitutes reform vs. revolution, and whether all changes labeled "reform" actually represent progress. For example, in the United States, proponents of term limits or rotation in office consider it a revolutionary method (advocated as early as the Articles of Confederation) for rooting out government corruption by altering basic political connections between incumbents and constituents. Opponents say that congressional term limits can create perverse incentives, and hinder reform, by taking power away from voters and encouraging "revolving door" politics.
A government's ability to implement reforms, referred to as its state capacity, is constrained by the prevailing political system.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
A great part, therefore, of my idea of reform is meant to operate gradually; some benefits will come at a nearer, some at a more remote period. We must no more make haste to be rich by parsimony, than by intemperate acquisition.
Edmund Burke, Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke
The chapter “REFORM OUGHT TO BE PROGRESSIVE.” is titled for Reform; states what Reform is.
Reform, reform, all men see and feel, is imperatively needed. Reform must either be got, and speedily, or else we die: and nearly all the men that speak, instruct us, saying, "Have you quite done your interesting Negroes in the Sugar Islands? Rush to the Jails, then, O ye reformers; snatch up the interesting scoundrel-population there, to them be nursing-fathers and nursing-mothers.
Thomas Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets
Names Reform several times; opens on Reform.
By changes in the material conditions of existence, this form of Socialism, however, by no means understands abolition of the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can be effected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms, based on the continued existence of these relations; reforms, therefore, that in no respect affect the relations between capital and labour, but, at the best, lessen the…
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
Names Reform several times; opens on Reform.
Philosophers who discussed Reform
Related ideas
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of History of philosophy in Poland.